Growing Up Black in American Apartheid &#8211; Ford Pt1

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Identity angst is a luxury of the privileged. And I was privileged. And I was/am angst. The fact that I have time space and a vocabulary to tease out my own relationship to race and represent Asian, and to lobby for more gender equity or fight for diversity in Western media and culture, means that I am already living my mother’s American dream. It wouldn’t look like that to her. Nope. She used to sigh and roll her eyes when I did shows like “Birth of a nASIAN” at the Smithsonian about Asian American identities. She was furious when I got into Juilliard because it meant I was not going to morph into a blonde doctor by sheer force of her will. And she would still be mad today that I am not pursuing her dream of passing as one of the Real Housewives of Assimilation Hills.

Kate Rigg, “My Asian Mom bought me a Blonde Wig.” Medium, October 25, 2019. https://medium.com/@katerigg/my-asian-mom-bought-me-a-blonde-wig-6158df9c7a3a.

Growing Up Black in American Apartheid – Ford Pt1

Growing Up Black in American Apartheid – Ford Pt1

Reality Asserts Itself
The Real News Network
2013-10-23

Paul Jay, Host

Glen Ford, Executive Editor
Black Agenda Report

On Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay: Glen Ford, Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report, tells his story as a red-diaper baby, growing up facing racism in the North living with his white activist mother, and living in the Deep South with his black deejay father.

Tags: Black Agenda Report, Georgia, Glen Ford, Jersey City, New Jersey, Real News Network, The Real News Network

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 24th, 2013 at 02:16Z and is filed under Autobiography, Interviews, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Mixed Race Studies

Growing Up Black in American Apartheid – Ford Pt1

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